Fit—Alignment with the Core Identity

Considering Organizational Culture Fit—how your team members align with your organization’s Core Identity—is a building block of Reinforcing Systems. In this excerpt from The Shift from Me to Team, which will be published this year, we delve into this important principle.

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Organizational Culture Fit

We use the term Fit to describe alignment to the Core Identity (Organizational Culture Fit) and alignment to the competencies and behaviors required by a job (Job Fit).

Does a team member fit the organization’s culture?

Is the team member committed to aligning with the Guiding Principles, Purpose, and Vision the team created?

As some team members Shift from Me to Team, their unselfish transition helps other team members align with the organization’s Core Identity. Team members’ Fit increases as the Boundaries of the Core Identity are more clearly understood and honored. Their Fit grows as they become more purposeful with their every action. As they feel greater joy in team success over their own, the Culture becomes more robust; there is an increasing sense of collective safety and security.

A leader may believe that considering Fit when recruiting new hires means bringing in people that look and think as they do. Did the person go to the same university? Are they the same religion or political bent? Do they speak the same language? Will the new hire fit in with the group that socializes after work? Do they look like me? Do they act like me?

But those are not ingredients in Organizational Culture Fit. Organizational Culture Fit means aligning with the organization’s Peak Performance Core Identity—its Purpose, Vision, and Guiding Principles—and that is all.

The Power of Diversity

Studies looking at complex problem-solving show that the best results are achieved when there is significant diversity—a broad range of perspectives honoring your Core Identity. The key to the most effective outcomes in problem-solving and decision-making is to ensure that the group charged with coming up with the solution:

• possesses the rudimentary competency to contribute to the solution
• possesses as much diversity of perspectives as possible

while

• being committed to honoring the organization’s Peak Performance Core Identity

From a university medical department chair

“Everyone has a slightly different perspective. People have made suggestions that have worked out great. One of the things I talked about is diversity, specifically gender diversity. There’s not a lot of women in leadership in this area. You’re stronger if you have a diverse team because everyone has a slightly different perspective. One of my vice-chairs might say to me, ‘Oh, I think we should do things this way,’ and maybe I thought we should do it another way, but once but I think about it, their solution is better than mine. You must engender that feeling of trust that someone can give their ideas without worrying that they’ll be made fun of, make someone angry, or any reason that might prevent them from contributing.”